Ireland's State of the Environment Report 2024

356 Chapter 13: Environment and Industry 8. Responses to environmental challenges It is critical that industry has a stable and consistent compliance base from which to work. While overall there is a good level of compliance across many industrial sectors in Ireland, there are several specific issues that are being addressed. These include operators that have not yet complied with their obligations to seek an environmental licence or permit and those whose operations are negatively impacting the environment. On the other end of the spectrum are facilities that are going beyond complying with the requirements of their licences to achieve high levels of environmental performance in their resource management. Addressing environmental performance Inspection and monitoring. The EPA’s Office of Environmental Enforcement (OEE) continually assesses the levels of compliance and the environmental performances of facilities licensed under the IED. Since 2020, the OEE has carried out over 5000 individual inspections at these facilities to assess compliance. Over the same period, the OEE opened over 200 investigations where significant issues were identified that required corrective actions or where an environmental risk was detected that required preventative measures to be implemented. National priority sites. The EPA uses a national priority sites (NPS) system to identify and publish the names of licensed sites that are deemed an enforcement priority. Since the NPS system began in 2017, 50 licensed facilities have been listed. Issues that result in facilities being listed include emissions to water and air, nuisance complaints (odour and noise) and poor waste management. The food and drink sector and the waste sector have appeared on the NPS list more than any other sector (Figure 13.20). Dairy processing and animal slaughtering plants have appeared more often than any other licensed industry type, constituting almost one-third of all sites on the NPS system (see Topic Box 13.8). Issues with poor waste water management and odour emissions are common at the dairy processing sites on the NPS list. As with the dairy sector, many of the issues at animal slaughtering plant sites relate to waste water and odour emissions because of delayed investment in and provision of suitable environmental control infrastructure such as noise and odour abatement technology. Figure 13.20  National priority sites list, by sector, 2017-2023 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 Others Cement manu- facturing Anaerobic digestion Chemical manu- facturing Surface coating Waste Food and drink Number of sites on NPS list